As is commonly known, in recent years, various kinds of home electronic devices such as a personal computer (PC), a television broadcast reception apparatus, and a recording/reproduction apparatus have a network connection function, so that a home network can be established using the network connection function.
In the home network, each connected device can control another. For example, based on control of a PC, a television broadcast reception apparatus can be caused to receive a desired program and record the program content to a recording/reproduction device, or the television broadcast reception apparatus can be caused to read desired content from the recording/reproduction device and reproduce the content.
Incidentally, this kind of home network is still under development, and there is much room for improvement. More specifically, it can be said that, for example, the home network has not yet developed to a level where a host device controls another device to perform a sufficiently practical control process desired by the user.